Archive for the ‘David Duke’ Category

Cable news made the former wizard of the KKK quite visible in Charlottesville, at what planners billed as the largest gathering of the alt-right community. The Unite the Right rally encouraged the like-minded to go to and demonstrate in Charlottesville, Virginia. Counter-protesters, of course, showed up, and many violent clashes ensued.

When the dust settled, a woman had been killed and 19 injured when a suspect apparently intentionally drove his car into a crowd of people, although the matter remains under investigation. Two police officers died when their patrol helicopter crashed.

Duke got considerable airtime in Charlottesville. Never mind that the last time he was taken even remotely seriously was in 1991 when he ran for governor of Louisiana. Not a single Republican congressional lawmaker supported him.

Mary Matalin, chief of staff of the Republican National Committee, said: He is not a Republican. We never considered him a Republican.

There will be no involvement in his campaign whatsoever. He lost by a large margin. He sought office four more times, losing each race.

He also served time for mail fraud and tax evasion.

President George Herbert Walker Bush issued this scathing dismissal: When someone asserts the Holocaust never took place, then I dont believe that person ever deserves one iota of public trust. When someone has so recently endorsed Nazism, it is inconceivable that someone can reasonably aspire to a leadership role in a free society.

Were it not for cable news digging up Duke from time to time, hed probably be working road construction under an assumed name in Kalamazoo.

Can we agree to denounce all bigots whether a David Duke or Maxine Waters or Rev. Al Sharpton? After all, Waters called President Donald Trumps cabinet members scumbags and said, Ive never seen anybody as disgusting or as disrespectful as he is. She recently even called Democrat Alan Dershowitz a racist.

As for Sharpton, he has a long list of racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic comments that in a rational world would long ago have consigned him to the ash bin of history. This is the man who, among many outrages during his career as a civil rights activist, falsely accused a white man of raping a black teenager and to this day has never apologized.

He helped to incite three days of anti-Semitic rioting in Crown Heights, New York, a tragedy that one Columbia University professor called a modern-day pogrom. Yet this bigot who whipped up the Crown Heights atmosphere by bellowing, If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house, somehow visited the Obama White House, according to The Washington Post, 72 times during Obamas first six years.

But its Trump aide Steven Bannon whom Trump critics malign as an anti-Semite.

After the violence in Charlottesville, Trump issued a statement denouncing hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides. But he got hammered for not calling out the white nationalist groups by name and for assigning blame to both sides.

Critics accused Trump of making a moral equivalence equating white nationalists and Nazi sympathizers to those who oppose them.

Normal people thought he meant both sides of the people fighting in the streets. But Trumps critics accused him of equating Nazis with anti-Nazis or something like that. So he issued another statement.

Trump said: Racism is evil.

And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.

Critics then called it too little, too late, especially coming from the man they consider the bigot in chief. Had Trump called out the bad guys by name, critics wouldve blasted him for not giving out their Social Security numbers, too.

The bigot in the White House actually got a smaller share of the white vote than did Mitt Romney in 2012, while getting a larger percentage of the black, Hispanic and Asian votes than Romney did.

Apparently blacks, Hispanics and Asians are too stupid to realize that they voted for a man who, right in front of them, reached out to people who hate them. Apparently, the white racists that Trump reached out to are too stupid to realize theyve attached themselves to a guy who is attracting the very people that white racists hate people of color.

Two related race themes, fervently believed by the left, drive this hatred for Trump.

First, the left believes, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that whites anti-black racism remains a major problem even after America became the only predominantly white country in the world to elect a black person to lead it.

Second, they believe that Trump won by catering to white racists.

Neither is true.

But the lefts desire to embrace these two narratives is, to them, much like climate change. Its settled science.

Larry Elder is a best-selling author and nationally syndicated radio talk-show host.

(JTA) The Twitter account of a Jewish Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate was discovered to have been hacked after it showed that she liked several posts by white supremacist leader David Duke.

Lena Epstein, who is running for the nomination in Michigan and was a co-chair of the Donald Trump presidential campaign there in 2016, disavowed any support of or connection to Duke, the one-time Ku Klux Klan head.

As a Jewish woman with deep roots in the Jewish faith, a proud lineage of Jewish leaders, and relatives who were killed in the Holocaust because of blind hatred and prejudice, there is little that could be more offensive to me than the suggestion that I support, like, or condone David Duke, neo-Nazis, or any group that promotes hatred and prejudice, Epstein said in a statement issued Friday.

The tweets with her likes gained traction after the states Democratic Party chairman, Brandon Dillon, began sharing screenshots of them, the MLive news website reported.

In a recent appearance on Fox News, Epstein praised Trump for his response to racism and violence and reiterated white supremacists and neo-Nazis are not representative of the Republican Party, according to MLive.

Her campaign website describes her as a millennial who has spent the last decade as a savvy automotive-industry businesswoman, community leader and nationally recognized conservative.

Over the weekend, hundreds of neo-Nazis descended on Charlottesville to stage a rally, including one of those torchlight rallies so popular before and during the Third Reich. Although their numbers were not great, they were surely greater than anyone expected, and the psychological intention of such nighttime rallies to intimidate anyone opposed had its intended effect.

And, of course, we can’t leave out the most important part: One of these fanatics (although we don’t know for sure if he acted alone) plowed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters on purpose, killing one person and seriously wounding nearly 20 others.

When this sort of thing happens, you hope the president can be satisfied to lay blame where it belongs and then leave it at that. President Trump was a bit late in doing the former, but he did it.

And then today he undid it.

A human being is dead. You can blame the leadership of the local police for their failure to treat a volatile situation seriously, and you’d be correct to do so. You could point out that leftist protesters are often violent and that some were on this occasion, and you’d also be correct.

But these points are a digression from the real issue. You’d hope that when something like this rises to the level that a president needs to address it, he can unequivocally place the blame where it belongs. That he can do so without feeling any need to defend or sympathize with the white nationalists who just killed someone in their effort to make racial hatred mainstream again.

But at today’s news conference, Trump just couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t leave it alone.

“What about the alt-left that came charging at the — as you say — the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt? …You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now. You had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit, and they were very, very violent.”

Again, the “alt-left” didn’t kill anybody in Charlottesville on this occasion. And the killing that occurred did not happen in the context of some kind of street brawl. It was a merciless, one-sided act of domestic terrorism by someone enjoying the advantage of a 4,000-pound automobile.

So why does the president equivocate in this way? Why does he feel the need to defend his initial “both sides” response to the violence? The situation demanded more moral courage than that.

“I’ve condemned neo-Nazis,” Trump said today. “I’ve condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue, Robert E. Lee.”

Sorry, Mr. President, but those weren’t Civil War Buffs carrying the banners of the “National Socialist Movement” through town. Admittedly, there are many people who don’t want those statues removed and are not neo-Nazis. But if you were in Charlottesville and you marched arm-in-arm with people carrying swastikas, shouting “Blood and soil,” and chanting “Jews will not replace us,” then what exactly are you if not a neo-Nazi?

Way back in February 2016, many primary voters were worried about Trump after his inexplicable decision to play dumb when asked about the support he had received from the racist political leader David Duke. Maybe they weren’t worried enough.

That incident, in which Trump later falsely claimed he had a problem with his earpiece (he clearly heard and even repeated back Duke’s name, showing he understood the question), evinced a disturbing lack of moral clarity on Trump’s part. And today’s presser makes clear that it appears to be a feature and not a bug.

Controversial white supremacist David Duke on Monday applauded President Donald Trumps comments that the alt-left had some blame to shoulder for the Charlottesville, Virginia attack.

Duke on Twitter wrote, Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa.

Duke shared the update on social media mere minutes after Trump made his comments.

During a press conference about the Charlottesville attack, which was held in the lobby of New York Citys Trump Tower on Monday, Trump said, I think theres blame on both sides.

You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs and it was vicious and it was horrible, and it was a horrible thing to watch, Trump said. I think theres blame on both sides.

When reporters asked the president about the violence from the alt-right, Trump fired back, What about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, the alt-right? He then asked, Do they have any semblance of guilt? What about the fact that they came charging with clubs in their hands swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do.

He added, I think there is blame on both sides. You look at both sides. I think there is blame object on both sides. You had some very bad people in that group. You also had some very fine people on both sides.

The president continued his remark, musing over the removals of Confederate-era statues.

You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down, of to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name, Trump said of the monument.

He continued, George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down excuse me are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him. Good. Are we going to take down his statue? He was a major slave owner.

Trump was then asked his point of view on the driver of the vehicle that plowed into a group of counter-protesters, and who killed a 32-year-old woman.

I think the driver of the car is a disgrace to himself, his family and this country, Trump responded. You can call it terrorism. You can call it murder. You can call it whatever you want. I would just call it as the fastest one to come up with a good verdict. There is a question. Is it murder? Is it terrorism? Then you get into legal semantics.

Getting David Dukes endorsement is problematic for any politician. Candidate Donald Trump said he didnt know who Duke was when the former Klan leader told his followers that voting for anyone else in 2016 is really treason to your heritage. Asked about Dukes presence at the Charlottesville Unite the Right protestSaturday, President Trump said he didnt know Duke was there.

Politicians on the right have long had a love-hate relationship with Duke. They dont like the taint of an official endorsement, but they want his supporters. Its a microcosm of the right wings flirtation with white supremacy, which is now boiling over with confrontations over Confederate symbols.

To win the governors race in Louisiana in 1995, Republican Mike Foster secretly purchased Dukes mailing list for $150,000, a hefty sum for 80,000 names that he could have purchased for a pittance from the state ethics board. He developed a mailing list that was a powerful list in the 90s, says Jeff Crouere, executive director and then-leader of the state GOP in 97 and 98.It wasnt exactly an above-board transaction, and he was fined by the ethics board. But that was the enduring power of DukeFoster would not champion David Duke, but he didnt in any way condemn him.

Foster won election and re-election with Dukes tacit backing, and the secret transaction only came to light when Duke told a grand jury investigating him on unrelated fraud charges about the payment. Foster said he kept it quiet because It aint real cool to put out there that you are buying something from David Duke.

Similar charges surfaced against Republican Woody Jenkins 1996 race against Mary Landrieu involving a payment of $82,500 for Dukes mailing list. Then Rep. Tony Perkins, Jenkins campaign manager, said that the payment was made to a media company and he was unaware of Dukes financial interest in the company. Perkins now heads the Family Research Council, which in response to The Daily Beast, re-sent a statement made at the time that Perkins profoundly opposes the racial views of Mr. Duke and was profoundly grieved to learn that Duke was a party to the company that had done work for the 1996 campaign.

Duke went to jail on tax-related charges and for defrauding his supporters, serving about a year in 2002-2003 before he resumed running for political office. Hes run for just about everything in the state, and in last years open primary for the Senate seat ultimately claimed by Republican John Kennedy, Duke didnt even make the runoff. He came in sixth with 3 percent of the vote, so his star is about burned out, Jeff Crouere, now a popular talk show host in New Orleans, told The Daily Beast. But then I turn on TV and see him getting covered. In Louisiana, hes a joke; hes not a serious political player; his endorsements dont mean anything. Nobody is soliciting David Dukes contributors anymore. We have had 20 years of David Dukes filth and hes an unwelcome guest who wont leave the party.No serious Republican wants him, but we cant force him to leave the party.

Duke is now flexing his muscles on the national alt-right stage. His neo-Confederate, neo-Nazi views have found space in Trumps America even as theyve lost ground in Louisiana, where hes been a fixture in the states politics since the 1970s. Democratic strategist James Carville attended LSU at the same time as Duke in the 70s and remembers him delivering regular rants at the universitys legendary Free Speech Alley. Duke gained notoriety walking around campus in a Nazi uniform.

Hes a man of a lot of hate and some talent, Carville told The Daily Beast. Hell go wherever theres a camera. A bunch of neo-Confederates in a torchlight march and hes there. Im sure that anytime anything like this happens, hes gonna be there.Hes sending out donation requests to his supporters, he needs to fuel his fire.

Asked what he meant by some talent, Carville replied, talent at getting covered. Full disclosure, I interviewed Duke in the mid-70s while he was a student at LSU and I was in the Atlanta bureau of Newsweek. What I remember most from that encounter is seeing Dukes infant daughter in a bassinet wearing a Klan robe. I didnt have a photographer with me, and that was before phones with cameras. Still, the image endures in my minds eye.

Politically, Duke was a powerhouse back then, an embodiment of white racial resentment. He was first a Democrat, then like so many Democrats in the South, gravitated to the GOP and its more open fanning of white grievance. He has a real interest in and affinity for money, says Carville, so cashing in on his mailing lists was a no-brainer.

A perennial candidate, he finally got elected to the state Senate in 1988 running as a Republican even though President George H.W. Bush and former President Reagan endorsed his opponent.Almost as soon as he was seated, Duke began running for the Senate against Bennett Johnson, and in 1990 got 44 percent of the vote. That was his high-water mark, says Crouere.

He won a clear majority of the white vote, which he then parlayed into a race for governor that pitted him against Edwin Edwards and produced the memorable bumper sticker, Vote for the crook, its important. Edwards hadnt yet gone to jail, but he was fighting charges of corruption and the bumper sticker proved prophetic.

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Duke got 39 percent in that race, but he claimed victory anyway, having carried 55 percent of the white vote, maintaining his hold on the states politics. And thats after they knew this is a Klan guy, says Carville.

There are people who say this is good, whats happened in Charlottesville, says Carville. It does kind of smoke people out a bit. They have to come up with a benign reason for attending a white nationalists torchlight parade. Hes (Trump) brought them out into the sunlight, and sunshine is the best disinfectant, as they say.

Carville called TrumpsSundaystatement condemning the Klan and white supremacy groups forSaturdaysmelee a hostage statement, forced on him by advisers. Trumps true colors emerged in his press conferenceTuesdayat Trump Tower. Trump is not trying to play both sides. Hes playing the white nationalists side, says Carville. My guess is hes pretty happy with all thats happening. Hes besieged and beleaguered, but the way out of his beleaguerment is to step into the breach of dishonor and restore the country to honor. Name me a single authoritarian who doesnt want public discord.

Then he can say at some point the country is falling apart. I will devote my entire energy to saving the country. Trump sees disorder as his friend, says Carville. He can say, This happened under Obama and now its happening again, guess who can do something about this: Donald J. Trump.

Whichever way this plays out, Duke is back in the news, and relevant again. He loved Trumps initial remarks blaming violence on all sides, and tweeted after Trump doubled down in his presser, equating alt-left and alt-right violence, Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage.Mailing lists dont have to be secretly bought and sold to secure Dukes fealty. The noxious game of racial and religious profiling he has exploited for so long is out in the open now in a way he could only have dreamed about when he was striding around the LSU campus in his Nazi uniform.

Charlottesville: The presidential disaster was his predictable lunatic self this week following the tragic events in Charlottesville, Va.Hardly surprising, and we still have more than three years to go with this one-man circus. Heres what I dont get, though. Trump is hardly shy about taking potshots at anyone, from fellow Republicans John McCain to Mitch McConnell. How this bombastic billionaire became the proletarian champion of mostly white working and middle-class folks of both genders is frankly baffling to me. Im sure ascendancy to the White House will be analyzed by revisionist historians for decades to come.

But what really struck me was how he sat on his tongue or fingers and did not tweet or directly respond in any way to statements from former KKK Grand Wizard leader and avowed white supremacist David Duke.

I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists, Duke said of Trump. Sounded like Duke and his minions have Trump in their pockets. The presidents reaction? Crickets so far. I can only surmise he thinks Duke is among those very fine people on the neo-Nazi side he spoke about this week.

Confederate statues:Tell me if Im wrong here. The Confederacy voted to secede and waged war on the United States of America.

So why the objection to taking down statues, monuments and other public tributes in honor of enemy combatants and traitors who killed thousands, including Minnesotans? A spokesperson for the Minnesota Historical Society confirmed there are no such structures here. Still, Lake Calhoun, named after a Union military figure who engaged in warfare against the Dakota people here, was recently renamed.

Whitewashing history? Give me a break. These tributes were mostly erected during the Jim Crow South. Many were placed in front of courthouses and other public buildings as a way to intimidate blacks and remind supporters that white supremacy was still alive, potent and viable in the South.

They should all come down and be placed in a museum specifically built to showcase the dark chapters of American history.

St. Paul post-birthday-bash melee: About a hundred youths took part in fights and chaos that broke out this past weekend following a birthday celebration at a recreation center next to Central High School. Someone fired at least three shots outside during an incident that spread to the nearby Green Line light rail station and might be connected to a serious assault on a young man at the downtown St. Paul stop.

The combatants were mostly black teens, giving local online haters whipped up by the events in Virginia easy ammunition to confirm racist views.

But thats not an excuse for lawlessness.

I partly grew up in what former President Jimmy Carter once described as the worst ghetto in America. It sure was a crime-plagued hell hole several years before Carter paid my childhood hood a much-publicized visit. But my overworked single mom never, ever allowed our dirt-poor plight there to be used as an excuse for me to act like an idiot. I was way more fearful of her than cops.

Proper upbringing starts in the home. And if the parents in those homes are not doing their jobs or are even enabling such behavior, then find someone else to model or reach inside and cling to your own sense of self-respect, no matter how young you are. Its not about color or background. Its about behavior and doing the right thing.

Former congressman and Grand Wizard/National Director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke has been suspended from Twitter. The white supremacist was present at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virignia last weekend where he said neo-Nazis, KKK members, and various other far-right groups had gathered to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. One woman was murdered by a neo-Nazi who drove his car through a crowd of protesters at the rally.

Twitter has faced a fair amount of criticism over the last few months for their habit of suspending or penalizing people who have the audacity to send curse words to media figures with blue check marks next to their names. Meanwhile, people like Richard Spencer and other open white supremacists are themselves verified and continue to use the social media platform to spread blatantly racist rhetoric. But hey, at least theyre polite about it.

In any case, Duke was one of the first openly racist figures Donald Trump was asked to denounce while he was running for president and he had a hard time doing it. After Trumps impromptu press conference on Charlottesville where POTUS heaped blame on the alt-left for the white supremacist-led violence, Duke (and Richard Spencer) praised the president for his remarks.

Here is what you see when you try to go to Dukes account at the moment.

For those who may be confused about the concept of free speech, Twitter is not the government.

Neo-Nazi, David Duke, heaped praise on the labour leader after the General Election and believes Corbyn helps his cause find ‘sunshine in the world’.

A FORMER KKK leader who took part in the Charlottesville race riot is a fan of Jeremy Corbyn and claimed the Labour leader helps his cause find sunshine in the world.

Neo-Nazi David Duke heaped praise on him after the General Election for battling against the Zionists.

AP:Associated Press

AFP or licensors

Corbyn this week called on Trump to condemn the KKK after the US President described white supremacists as very fine people following the clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, which left one dead and 20 injured.

During an LBC interview on Wednesday, Corbyn said: Surely its the duty of every political leader to make sure you stand up against racism and intolerance, wherever it raises its head.

But The Sun can reveal that in a 2015 radio interview Duke claimed the election of Corbyn as Labour leader would stop Jews from running Britain.

He said: We must keep looking for the sunshine and I do believe we are going to find the sunshine in this world.

I think things are opening up. And one encouraging thing that I see nowhis positions on the Middle East.

He added: Its a really good kind of evolutionary thing, isnt it, when people are beginning to recognise Zionist power and ultimately the Jewish establishment power in Britain and in the Western World.

Rex Features

Rex Features

Rex Features

In a separate radio show interview in June 2017 shortly after the General Election with British fascist, Mark Collett, Duke heaped further praise on Corbyn.

He said: Hes (Corbyn) been very, very strong, certainly more than any other person that I know of in politics in Britain.

Hes been against these insane Zionist wars, so the Zionists hate his guts, even though theres a lot of commie Zionists that are very, very communist and they act like theyre anti-Zionists but there you go. Theyre not.

Reuters

Trump was criticised in 2016 for refusing to condemn Duke during an interview on CNN.

Duke said on Saturday that the white nationalist rally represented a turning point for Americans.

He added: We are determined to take our country back. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.

From Trump Tower in New York City, President Trump defends his decision to delay responding to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. USA TODAY

There was a storm of negative reaction to President Trump’s news conference Tuesday in which he said both the white supremacists and counter-protesters were responsible for the violence that broke out in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday.

Among two voices that spoke out loudly in defense of the president’s remarks: Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and white supremacist figurehead Richard Spencer.

“Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemnthe leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa,” Duke tweeted after the news conference.

Spencer said Trump “cares about the truth” and said Trump’s “statement was fair and down to earth.”

Spencer and Duke were present at the protest in Charlottesville. At that rally, Dukeexplicitly tied the white supremacist movement to Trump.

“We are determined to take our country back,” Duke said Saturday. “We are going to fulfill the promise of Donald Trump. That’s what we believe in. That’s why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said he’s going to take our country back.”

“I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists,” Duke tweeted.

Duke also posted a more than 45-minute rambling video response Monday to Trump’s condemnation ofracist groups.

“To get elected today you can’t really speak straightforwardly and totally honestly. If you do you’re going to be crucified,” Duke said as he explained that he understood why Trump felt he needed to condemn white supremacists.

“You had to come out and say I condemn all these people,” Duke said. “President Trump please, for God’s sake, don’t feel like you’ve got to say these things. It’s not going to do you any good. They hate you.”

Duke also went on an anti-Semitic tirade about the media and called what happened in Charlottesville a “criminal conspiracy” in which white supremacists were “set up” to be attacked by the counter protesters.

“Well, our people defended themselves and some people went too far, obviously,” Duke said.

Who knew David Duke mattered? Cable news made the former wizard of the KKK quite visible in Charlottesville, at what planners billed as the largest gathering of the alt-right community. The Unite the Right rally encouraged the like-minded to go to and demonstrate in Charlottesville, Virginia. Counter-protesters, of course, showed up, and many violent clashes ensued. When the dust settled, a woman had been killed and 19 injured when a suspect apparently intentionally drove his car into a crowd of people, although the matter remains under investigation. Two police officers died when their patrol helicopter crashed. Duke got considerable airtime in Charlottesville. Never mind that the last time he was taken even remotely seriously was in 1991 when he ran for governor of Louisiana. Not a single Republican congressional lawmaker supported him. Mary Matalin, chief of staff of the Republican National Committee, said: He is not a Republican. We never considered him a Republican. There will be no involvement in his campaign whatsoever. He lost by a large margin. He sought office four more times, losing each race. He also served time for mail fraud and tax evasion. President George Herbert Walker Bush issued this scathing dismissal: When someone asserts the Holocaust never took place, then I dont believe that person ever deserves one iota of public trust. When someone has so recently endorsed Nazism, it is inconceivable that someone can reasonably aspire to a leadership role in a free society. Were it not for cable news digging up Duke from time to time, hed probably be working road construction under an assumed name in Kalamazoo. Can we agree to denounce all bigots whether a David Duke or Maxine Waters or Rev. Al Sharpton? After all, Waters called President Donald Trumps cabinet members scumbags and said, Ive never seen anybody as disgusting or as disrespectful as he is. She recently even called Democrat Alan Dershowitz a racist. As for Sharpton, he has a long list of racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic comments that in a rational world would long ago have consigned him to the ash bin of history. This is the man who, among many outrages during his career as a civil rights activist, falsely accused a white man of raping a black teenager and to this day has never apologized. He helped to incite three days of anti-Semitic rioting in Crown Heights, New York, a tragedy that one Columbia University professor called a modern-day pogrom. Yet this bigot who whipped up the Crown Heights atmosphere by bellowing, If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house, somehow visited the Obama White House, according to The Washington Post, 72 times during Obamas first six years. But its Trump aide Steven Bannon whom Trump critics malign as an anti-Semite. After the violence in Charlottesville, Trump issued a statement denouncing hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides. But he got hammered for not calling out the white nationalist groups by name and for assigning blame to both sides. Critics accused Trump of making a moral equivalence equating white nationalists and Nazi sympathizers to those who oppose them. Normal people thought he meant both sides of the people fighting in the streets. But Trumps critics accused him of equating Nazis with anti-Nazis or something like that. So he issued another statement. Trump said: Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans. Critics then called it too little, too late, especially coming from the man they consider the bigot in chief. Had Trump called out the bad guys by name, critics wouldve blasted him for not giving out their Social Security numbers, too. The bigot in the White House actually got a smaller share of the white vote than did Mitt Romney in 2012, while getting a larger percentage of the black, Hispanic and Asian votes than Romney did. Apparently blacks, Hispanics and Asians are too stupid to realize that they voted for a man who, right in front of them, reached out to people who hate them. Apparently, the white racists that Trump reached out to are too stupid to realize theyve attached themselves to a guy who is attracting the very people that white racists hate people of color. Two related race themes, fervently believed by the left, drive this hatred for Trump. First, the left believes, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that whites anti-black racism remains a major problem even after America became the only predominantly white country in the world to elect a black person to lead it. Second, they believe that Trump won by catering to white racists. Neither is true. But the lefts desire to embrace these two narratives is, to them, much like climate change. Its settled science. Larry Elder is a best-selling author and nationally syndicated radio talk-show host.

YouTube (JTA) The Twitter account of a Jewish Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate was discovered to have been hacked after it showed that she liked several posts by white supremacist leader David Duke. Lena Epstein, who is running for the nomination in Michigan and was a co-chair of the Donald Trump presidential campaign there in 2016, disavowed any support of or connection to Duke, the one-time Ku Klux Klan head. As a Jewish woman with deep roots in the Jewish faith, a proud lineage of Jewish leaders, and relatives who were killed in the Holocaust because of blind hatred and prejudice, there is little that could be more offensive to me than the suggestion that I support, like, or condone David Duke, neo-Nazis, or any group that promotes hatred and prejudice, Epstein said in a statement issued Friday. The tweets with her likes gained traction after the states Democratic Party chairman, Brandon Dillon, began sharing screenshots of them, the MLive news website reported. In a recent appearance on Fox News, Epstein praised Trump for his response to racism and violence and reiterated white supremacists and neo-Nazis are not representative of the Republican Party, according to MLive. Her campaign website describes her as a millennial who has spent the last decade as a savvy automotive-industry businesswoman, community leader and nationally recognized conservative.

Over the weekend, hundreds of neo-Nazis descended on Charlottesville to stage a rally, including one of those torchlight rallies so popular before and during the Third Reich. Although their numbers were not great, they were surely greater than anyone expected, and the psychological intention of such nighttime rallies to intimidate anyone opposed had its intended effect. And, of course, we can’t leave out the most important part: One of these fanatics (although we don’t know for sure if he acted alone) plowed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters on purpose, killing one person and seriously wounding nearly 20 others. When this sort of thing happens, you hope the president can be satisfied to lay blame where it belongs and then leave it at that. President Trump was a bit late in doing the former, but he did it. And then today he undid it. A human being is dead. You can blame the leadership of the local police for their failure to treat a volatile situation seriously, and you’d be correct to do so. You could point out that leftist protesters are often violent and that some were on this occasion, and you’d also be correct. But these points are a digression from the real issue. You’d hope that when something like this rises to the level that a president needs to address it, he can unequivocally place the blame where it belongs. That he can do so without feeling any need to defend or sympathize with the white nationalists who just killed someone in their effort to make racial hatred mainstream again. But at today’s news conference, Trump just couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t leave it alone. “What about the alt-left that came charging at the — as you say — the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt? …You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now. You had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit, and they were very, very violent.” Again, the “alt-left” didn’t kill anybody in Charlottesville on this occasion. And the killing that occurred did not happen in the context of some kind of street brawl. It was a merciless, one-sided act of domestic terrorism by someone enjoying the advantage of a 4,000-pound automobile. So why does the president equivocate in this way? Why does he feel the need to defend his initial “both sides” response to the violence? The situation demanded more moral courage than that. “I’ve condemned neo-Nazis,” Trump said today. “I’ve condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue, Robert E. Lee.” Sorry, Mr. President, but those weren’t Civil War Buffs carrying the banners of the “National Socialist Movement” through town. Admittedly, there are many people who don’t want those statues removed and are not neo-Nazis. But if you were in Charlottesville and you marched arm-in-arm with people carrying swastikas, shouting “Blood and soil,” and chanting “Jews will not replace us,” then what exactly are you if not a neo-Nazi? Way back in February 2016, many primary voters were worried about Trump after his inexplicable decision to play dumb when asked about the support he had received from the racist political leader David Duke. Maybe they weren’t worried enough. That incident, in which Trump later falsely claimed he had a problem with his earpiece (he clearly heard and even repeated back Duke’s name, showing he understood the question), evinced a disturbing lack of moral clarity on Trump’s part. And today’s presser makes clear that it appears to be a feature and not a bug.

Controversial white supremacist David Duke on Monday applauded President Donald Trumps comments that the alt-left had some blame to shoulder for the Charlottesville, Virginia attack. Duke on Twitter wrote, Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa. Duke shared the update on social media mere minutes after Trump made his comments. During a press conference about the Charlottesville attack, which was held in the lobby of New York Citys Trump Tower on Monday, Trump said, I think theres blame on both sides. You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs and it was vicious and it was horrible, and it was a horrible thing to watch, Trump said. I think theres blame on both sides. When reporters asked the president about the violence from the alt-right, Trump fired back, What about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, the alt-right? He then asked, Do they have any semblance of guilt? What about the fact that they came charging with clubs in their hands swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do. He added, I think there is blame on both sides. You look at both sides. I think there is blame object on both sides. You had some very bad people in that group. You also had some very fine people on both sides. The president continued his remark, musing over the removals of Confederate-era statues. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down, of to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name, Trump said of the monument. He continued, George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down excuse me are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him. Good. Are we going to take down his statue? He was a major slave owner. Trump was then asked his point of view on the driver of the vehicle that plowed into a group of counter-protesters, and who killed a 32-year-old woman. I think the driver of the car is a disgrace to himself, his family and this country, Trump responded. You can call it terrorism. You can call it murder. You can call it whatever you want. I would just call it as the fastest one to come up with a good verdict. There is a question. Is it murder? Is it terrorism? Then you get into legal semantics.

Getting David Dukes endorsement is problematic for any politician. Candidate Donald Trump said he didnt know who Duke was when the former Klan leader told his followers that voting for anyone else in 2016 is really treason to your heritage. Asked about Dukes presence at the Charlottesville Unite the Right protestSaturday, President Trump said he didnt know Duke was there. Politicians on the right have long had a love-hate relationship with Duke. They dont like the taint of an official endorsement, but they want his supporters. Its a microcosm of the right wings flirtation with white supremacy, which is now boiling over with confrontations over Confederate symbols. To win the governors race in Louisiana in 1995, Republican Mike Foster secretly purchased Dukes mailing list for $150,000, a hefty sum for 80,000 names that he could have purchased for a pittance from the state ethics board. He developed a mailing list that was a powerful list in the 90s, says Jeff Crouere, executive director and then-leader of the state GOP in 97 and 98.It wasnt exactly an above-board transaction, and he was fined by the ethics board. But that was the enduring power of DukeFoster would not champion David Duke, but he didnt in any way condemn him. Foster won election and re-election with Dukes tacit backing, and the secret transaction only came to light when Duke told a grand jury investigating him on unrelated fraud charges about the payment. Foster said he kept it quiet because It aint real cool to put out there that you are buying something from David Duke. Similar charges surfaced against Republican Woody Jenkins 1996 race against Mary Landrieu involving a payment of $82,500 for Dukes mailing list. Then Rep. Tony Perkins, Jenkins campaign manager, said that the payment was made to a media company and he was unaware of Dukes financial interest in the company. Perkins now heads the Family Research Council, which in response to The Daily Beast, re-sent a statement made at the time that Perkins profoundly opposes the racial views of Mr. Duke and was profoundly grieved to learn that Duke was a party to the company that had done work for the 1996 campaign. Duke went to jail on tax-related charges and for defrauding his supporters, serving about a year in 2002-2003 before he resumed running for political office. Hes run for just about everything in the state, and in last years open primary for the Senate seat ultimately claimed by Republican John Kennedy, Duke didnt even make the runoff. He came in sixth with 3 percent of the vote, so his star is about burned out, Jeff Crouere, now a popular talk show host in New Orleans, told The Daily Beast. But then I turn on TV and see him getting covered. In Louisiana, hes a joke; hes not a serious political player; his endorsements dont mean anything. Nobody is soliciting David Dukes contributors anymore. We have had 20 years of David Dukes filth and hes an unwelcome guest who wont leave the party.No serious Republican wants him, but we cant force him to leave the party. Duke is now flexing his muscles on the national alt-right stage. His neo-Confederate, neo-Nazi views have found space in Trumps America even as theyve lost ground in Louisiana, where hes been a fixture in the states politics since the 1970s. Democratic strategist James Carville attended LSU at the same time as Duke in the 70s and remembers him delivering regular rants at the universitys legendary Free Speech Alley. Duke gained notoriety walking around campus in a Nazi uniform. Hes a man of a lot of hate and some talent, Carville told The Daily Beast. Hell go wherever theres a camera. A bunch of neo-Confederates in a torchlight march and hes there. Im sure that anytime anything like this happens, hes gonna be there.Hes sending out donation requests to his supporters, he needs to fuel his fire. Asked what he meant by some talent, Carville replied, talent at getting covered. Full disclosure, I interviewed Duke in the mid-70s while he was a student at LSU and I was in the Atlanta bureau of Newsweek. What I remember most from that encounter is seeing Dukes infant daughter in a bassinet wearing a Klan robe. I didnt have a photographer with me, and that was before phones with cameras. Still, the image endures in my minds eye. Politically, Duke was a powerhouse back then, an embodiment of white racial resentment. He was first a Democrat, then like so many Democrats in the South, gravitated to the GOP and its more open fanning of white grievance. He has a real interest in and affinity for money, says Carville, so cashing in on his mailing lists was a no-brainer. A perennial candidate, he finally got elected to the state Senate in 1988 running as a Republican even though President George H.W. Bush and former President Reagan endorsed his opponent.Almost as soon as he was seated, Duke began running for the Senate against Bennett Johnson, and in 1990 got 44 percent of the vote. That was his high-water mark, says Crouere. He won a clear majority of the white vote, which he then parlayed into a race for governor that pitted him against Edwin Edwards and produced the memorable bumper sticker, Vote for the crook, its important. Edwards hadnt yet gone to jail, but he was fighting charges of corruption and the bumper sticker proved prophetic. Get The Beast In Your Inbox! Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast. A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don’t). Subscribe Thank You! You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason. Duke got 39 percent in that race, but he claimed victory anyway, having carried 55 percent of the white vote, maintaining his hold on the states politics. And thats after they knew this is a Klan guy, says Carville. There are people who say this is good, whats happened in Charlottesville, says Carville. It does kind of smoke people out a bit. They have to come up with a benign reason for attending a white nationalists torchlight parade. Hes (Trump) brought them out into the sunlight, and sunshine is the best disinfectant, as they say. Carville called TrumpsSundaystatement condemning the Klan and white supremacy groups forSaturdaysmelee a hostage statement, forced on him by advisers. Trumps true colors emerged in his press conferenceTuesdayat Trump Tower. Trump is not trying to play both sides. Hes playing the white nationalists side, says Carville. My guess is hes pretty happy with all thats happening. Hes besieged and beleaguered, but the way out of his beleaguerment is to step into the breach of dishonor and restore the country to honor. Name me a single authoritarian who doesnt want public discord. Then he can say at some point the country is falling apart. I will devote my entire energy to saving the country. Trump sees disorder as his friend, says Carville. He can say, This happened under Obama and now its happening again, guess who can do something about this: Donald J. Trump. Whichever way this plays out, Duke is back in the news, and relevant again. He loved Trumps initial remarks blaming violence on all sides, and tweeted after Trump doubled down in his presser, equating alt-left and alt-right violence, Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage.Mailing lists dont have to be secretly bought and sold to secure Dukes fealty. The noxious game of racial and religious profiling he has exploited for so long is out in the open now in a way he could only have dreamed about when he was striding around the LSU campus in his Nazi uniform.

Things that made me shake my head this week: Charlottesville: The presidential disaster was his predictable lunatic self this week following the tragic events in Charlottesville, Va.Hardly surprising, and we still have more than three years to go with this one-man circus. Heres what I dont get, though. Trump is hardly shy about taking potshots at anyone, from fellow Republicans John McCain to Mitch McConnell. How this bombastic billionaire became the proletarian champion of mostly white working and middle-class folks of both genders is frankly baffling to me. Im sure ascendancy to the White House will be analyzed by revisionist historians for decades to come. But what really struck me was how he sat on his tongue or fingers and did not tweet or directly respond in any way to statements from former KKK Grand Wizard leader and avowed white supremacist David Duke. I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists, Duke said of Trump. Sounded like Duke and his minions have Trump in their pockets. The presidents reaction? Crickets so far. I can only surmise he thinks Duke is among those very fine people on the neo-Nazi side he spoke about this week. Confederate statues:Tell me if Im wrong here. The Confederacy voted to secede and waged war on the United States of America. So why the objection to taking down statues, monuments and other public tributes in honor of enemy combatants and traitors who killed thousands, including Minnesotans? A spokesperson for the Minnesota Historical Society confirmed there are no such structures here. Still, Lake Calhoun, named after a Union military figure who engaged in warfare against the Dakota people here, was recently renamed. Whitewashing history? Give me a break. These tributes were mostly erected during the Jim Crow South. Many were placed in front of courthouses and other public buildings as a way to intimidate blacks and remind supporters that white supremacy was still alive, potent and viable in the South. They should all come down and be placed in a museum specifically built to showcase the dark chapters of American history. St. Paul post-birthday-bash melee: About a hundred youths took part in fights and chaos that broke out this past weekend following a birthday celebration at a recreation center next to Central High School. Someone fired at least three shots outside during an incident that spread to the nearby Green Line light rail station and might be connected to a serious assault on a young man at the downtown St. Paul stop. The combatants were mostly black teens, giving local online haters whipped up by the events in Virginia easy ammunition to confirm racist views. But thats not an excuse for lawlessness. I partly grew up in what former President Jimmy Carter once described as the worst ghetto in America. It sure was a crime-plagued hell hole several years before Carter paid my childhood hood a much-publicized visit. But my overworked single mom never, ever allowed our dirt-poor plight there to be used as an excuse for me to act like an idiot. I was way more fearful of her than cops. Proper upbringing starts in the home. And if the parents in those homes are not doing their jobs or are even enabling such behavior, then find someone else to model or reach inside and cling to your own sense of self-respect, no matter how young you are. Its not about color or background. Its about behavior and doing the right thing.

Former congressman and Grand Wizard/National Director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke has been suspended from Twitter. The white supremacist was present at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virignia last weekend where he said neo-Nazis, KKK members, and various other far-right groups had gathered to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. One woman was murdered by a neo-Nazi who drove his car through a crowd of protesters at the rally. Twitter has faced a fair amount of criticism over the last few months for their habit of suspending or penalizing people who have the audacity to send curse words to media figures with blue check marks next to their names. Meanwhile, people like Richard Spencer and other open white supremacists are themselves verified and continue to use the social media platform to spread blatantly racist rhetoric. But hey, at least theyre polite about it. In any case, Duke was one of the first openly racist figures Donald Trump was asked to denounce while he was running for president and he had a hard time doing it. After Trumps impromptu press conference on Charlottesville where POTUS heaped blame on the alt-left for the white supremacist-led violence, Duke (and Richard Spencer) praised the president for his remarks. Here is what you see when you try to go to Dukes account at the moment. For those who may be confused about the concept of free speech, Twitter is not the government. UPDATE, 2:07 p.m.:Hes back. [Screenshot via Tariq Nasheed]

Neo-Nazi, David Duke, heaped praise on the labour leader after the General Election and believes Corbyn helps his cause find ‘sunshine in the world’. A FORMER KKK leader who took part in the Charlottesville race riot is a fan of Jeremy Corbyn and claimed the Labour leader helps his cause find sunshine in the world. Neo-Nazi David Duke heaped praise on him after the General Election for battling against the Zionists. AP:Associated Press AFP or licensors Corbyn this week called on Trump to condemn the KKK after the US President described white supremacists as very fine people following the clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, which left one dead and 20 injured. During an LBC interview on Wednesday, Corbyn said: Surely its the duty of every political leader to make sure you stand up against racism and intolerance, wherever it raises its head. But The Sun can reveal that in a 2015 radio interview Duke claimed the election of Corbyn as Labour leader would stop Jews from running Britain. He said: We must keep looking for the sunshine and I do believe we are going to find the sunshine in this world. I think things are opening up. And one encouraging thing that I see nowhis positions on the Middle East. He added: Its a really good kind of evolutionary thing, isnt it, when people are beginning to recognise Zionist power and ultimately the Jewish establishment power in Britain and in the Western World. Rex Features Rex Features Rex Features In a separate radio show interview in June 2017 shortly after the General Election with British fascist, Mark Collett, Duke heaped further praise on Corbyn. He said: Hes (Corbyn) been very, very strong, certainly more than any other person that I know of in politics in Britain. Hes been against these insane Zionist wars, so the Zionists hate his guts, even though theres a lot of commie Zionists that are very, very communist and they act like theyre anti-Zionists but there you go. Theyre not. Reuters Trump was criticised in 2016 for refusing to condemn Duke during an interview on CNN. Duke said on Saturday that the white nationalist rally represented a turning point for Americans. He added: We are determined to take our country back. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.

From Trump Tower in New York City, President Trump defends his decision to delay responding to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. USA TODAY There was a storm of negative reaction to President Trump’s news conference Tuesday in which he said both the white supremacists and counter-protesters were responsible for the violence that broke out in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday. Among two voices that spoke out loudly in defense of the president’s remarks: Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and white supremacist figurehead Richard Spencer. “Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemnthe leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa,” Duke tweeted after the news conference. Spencer said Trump “cares about the truth” and said Trump’s “statement was fair and down to earth.” Spencer and Duke were present at the protest in Charlottesville. At that rally, Dukeexplicitly tied the white supremacist movement to Trump. “We are determined to take our country back,” Duke said Saturday. “We are going to fulfill the promise of Donald Trump. That’s what we believe in. That’s why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said he’s going to take our country back.” But Monday, Duke expressed strong disappointment after Trump’s speech denouncing white supremacist groups. “I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists,” Duke tweeted. Duke also posted a more than 45-minute rambling video response Monday to Trump’s condemnation ofracist groups. “To get elected today you can’t really speak straightforwardly and totally honestly. If you do you’re going to be crucified,” Duke said as he explained that he understood why Trump felt he needed to condemn white supremacists. “You had to come out and say I condemn all these people,” Duke said. “President Trump please, for God’s sake, don’t feel like you’ve got to say these things. It’s not going to do you any good. They hate you.” Duke also went on an anti-Semitic tirade about the media and called what happened in Charlottesville a “criminal conspiracy” in which white supremacists were “set up” to be attacked by the counter protesters. “Well, our people defended themselves and some people went too far, obviously,” Duke said. Read more: Trump defends Charlottesville response, says ‘alt left’ protesters just as violent as white supremacists Notable moments from President Trump’s defense of his Charlottesville statement Twitter melts down in response to Trump comments Autoplay Show Thumbnails Show Captions Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2w82kNV

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